About WhatNWhy

I am Abdul Rafay, a digital marketing specialist covering SEO, PPC, Meta Ads, content marketing, and email marketing. I work mainly with businesses in the UK and USA, and I write and edit every guide on this site.

WhatNWhy exists because most digital marketing content is written to rank rather than to help. It repeats what already ranks, quotes figures that trace back to nowhere, and promises outcomes that depend on things no article controls. I wanted to build something that did the opposite.

Why the Name

The name is not branding. It is a checklist. Every topic on this site has to answer the same set of questions before it goes live.

What

What the thing actually is, in plain language

Why

Why it matters, and what it changes if you get it right

How

How to apply it, described as logic rather than button clicks

When

When it works, when it does not, and when it stops working

If an article cannot answer those, it is not finished. It does not matter how many words it has.

What I Will Not Do

Three rules, set before there was anything to lose by setting them. They are here so you know what to expect, and so I have something to be held to.

  • No invented statistics. If a figure appears on this site, the source is named so you can check it. Where I cannot find a credible source, the figure comes out rather than getting dressed up as a rough estimate.
  • No guaranteed results. No rankings promised, no return on ad spend promised, no income promised. Marketing outcomes depend on your offer, your market, your competition, and your timing. An article controls none of those, and anyone claiming otherwise is selling something.
  • No fabricated case studies. Examples on this site are clearly framed as illustrative scenarios. They are not claims about real clients. I built a case studies page once, then deleted it because I could not document any of it. It stays unpublished until there is real, permission granted work to put on it.

Certifications

Rather than describing myself as certified and leaving it there, here is exactly what I hold and where you can check it.

HubSpot Academy

Both badges below link to my public verification page on HubSpot's own site. Click either one to confirm it independently.

HubSpot Academy SEO Certified badge for Abdul Rafay
SEO Certified HubSpot Academy Verify this certification
HubSpot Academy SEO II Certified badge for Abdul Rafay
SEO II Certified HubSpot Academy Verify this certification

Innovista

Innovista issues certificate codes rather than a public verification page. The certificates are reproduced below in full, including their codes, so you can see exactly what they say.

Innovista certificate of achievement awarded to Abdul Rafay for completing the SEO course
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Course Issued 4 October 2024 Certificate Code: 589-1325-14824
Innovista certificate of achievement awarded to Abdul Rafay for completing the Google Ads course
Google Ads Course Issued 29 November 2024 Certificate Code: 589-4536-14824

A certification proves someone completed a course. It does not prove they are good at the job, and I would not want it read that way. What it does show is that the fundamentals here are learned rather than guessed at.

What Is on This Site

Guides

Practical guides across five areas: SEO, PPC, Meta Ads, content marketing, and email marketing. Each one is built around a question someone actually types into a search box, and answers it properly rather than circling it.

Platform interfaces move constantly, so setup steps are written as logic rather than as exact button locations. Where advice depends on something that might change, that is flagged rather than left for you to discover the hard way.

Free Calculators

A set of free tools covering the numbers most people end up guessing at: PPC budgets, cost per lead, break even ROAS, daily ad spend, Meta Ads reach, and several others.

They run entirely in your browser. Nothing you type into them is sent anywhere or stored, there is no account to create, and there is no email to hand over. A calculator behind an email gate is not a tool, it is a lead magnet wearing a costume.

Guest Contributions

I accept guest contributions from other writers. To be clear about where that sits: it is a paid placement, and the fee is stated openly on the Write For Us page rather than mentioned after someone has written an article.

Every submission still goes through editorial review, and paying does not guarantee publication. All outbound links in guest posts are marked rel="nofollow sponsored", in line with Google's guidance on paid links. Guest posts carry the author's own byline.

Get in Touch

If you have a question about something you read here, spotted a mistake, or want to suggest a topic, I would like to hear it. I read every message.

Email: whatnwhy.10@gmail.com

Contact form: whatnwhy.com/contact-us

If you find something on this site that is wrong or out of date, tell me which article and what the problem is. I would rather correct it than defend it.